


Major In Flashback For Selfpreservation

by MarlaHectic



Series: Post-Graduate In Friendship [5]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Coping Mechanisms, F/M, Improving, OH MY GOD I AM SO BAD AT TAGS, Pining, Post-Canon, This is so long I am so sorry, but nothiing too hard, quarantine setting, references to alcoholism, shirley and troy are also obviously mentioned, some meta comments, weird flahback-reality thingy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:35:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24560926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarlaHectic/pseuds/MarlaHectic
Summary: In the middle of the Quarantine, Jeff is having some existencial life nightmares...Luckily enough, he had learned a trick to make them go away: remember the good things that let him to this moment (PLEASE, DON'T LET BRITTA KNOW I AM ACTUALLY LISTENING TO HER ADVISE).Yeah, my summaries suck is still here.
Relationships: Annie Edison/Jeff Winger
Series: Post-Graduate In Friendship [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1775257
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Major In Flashback For Selfpreservation

**Author's Note:**

> This was freaking hard to write. It took a lot of me to finish it and I am still pretty nervous it is not good enough. Furthermore, I put all my life and soul on it as I am in the middle of college exams and had been shorta kinda of a life-boat for me.  
> Furthermore, this is full of micro-self headcanons post canon of mine, hope you don't mind.  
> Anyway, stop with the self-explaining, I hope you enjoy it and that you will forget my non-native speaker and quick tipper mistakes,  
> Marla
> 
> Allons-y!

MAJOR IN FLASHBACK FOR SELFPRESERVATION

Hello, my name is Abed Nadir and I am here to tell you that I highly consider this line of storytelling too cliché and undeserving of real attention. However, it has been made in order to maintain my friend’s sanity during Quarantine so…I will go with it. Just once.  
I just hope our #andamovie is more original and better told (even though it will probably cover an alternative time line where events won’t develop in the same way as they do in this one).

Everything was beyond great for Jeffrey Winger.  
Nothing had happened, nothing happened all those years ago, nobody told the truth about his Law Degree. And, hell, every year that went by he kept getting better and better at it; who needs college anyway?  
He had even eventually memorized some of those moronic laws nobody ever truly used or listened to once you leave the classroom.  
Case after case, unbeatable and, luckily for him and his mental health, ageing as little as humanly possible.  
And then this particular case came; year 2021, Annie Edison, a 30 year-old girl which was, apparently, the most successful doctor of one of the top hospitals of the country…but that had been found in possession of pills...  
...in her system, while working.  
No other lawyer had apparently been able to set her free; making him, quite literally, the girl last hope, as her overprotective (and mostly only person he had contact with) mother pointed out.  
So he did it, he helped her going back to practice, as if nothing happened. Hell, he almost made her look like a goddam hero.  
A hero who returned to self-dosing even before she had left the building, unluckily enough to face him directly.  
She tried to smile, but her eyes were full of shame.  
“I tried to be my own person, you know? I tried to be better…I went to this…this stupid community college in Colorado but…I just…it was too much, I was too alone and my mother…she has a way with words, almost as good as yours.”  
He didn’t say a word; it wasn’t as if he had asked for any explanation. He just left, leaving the poor girl (she might be thirty, but she definitively didn’t look as someone who had been able to reach true maturity) there, half high, full ashamed of herself.

The news of her death of an overdose a week later somehow reached Jeff.  
He didn’t care, his paycheck had been covered, there was nothing else to it.

Jeff woke up, sweating.  
It wasn't the first time he had those dreams, the dreams in which he never stopped being the person -more like human garbage- he used to be, because he hadn't to. In those dreams, a member of the Study Group always got hurt, and always because of him.  
When he had those dreams, he couldn’t help but wonder if that Old-Jeff was still the real him, whether he had managed to be different temporarily; this other him at his back, crawling, looking for the chance to take control again.  
He left bed and went to the kitchen, doing something that Britta recommended and, though he was never going to admit it, helped him regain perspective and prevent the skeletons in his closet to grown muscles and skin so they could walk out on their own: he narrated himself how he ended there (and how he totally didn't fucked up the Study Group member of the daily nightmare so much).  
He could almost hear Abed complaining of the completely overdone trope.  
"Shut up Abed".  
There he went.

If someone had told the Jeff Winger that 11 years ago entered for the first time Greendale's door that he was going to spent April of 2020 locked down in a pretty humble NY flat that he wasn't able to afford with his own salary, with absolutely no alcohol to be found in the whereabouts, a toddler to take care of, some grey hair not being drastically taken down and a serious relationship with a responsible woman going on...he would have wondered where did he slip so much to get that kind of punishment.  
And, of course, he wouldn't have believed for one second that he couldn’t be happier about it.  
But, again of course, he had six years of, as Abed would put it, character's growth right there, at the weirdest craziest community college on Planet Earth.  
And what came afterwards.

["Entering flashback, Greendale Community College, a month after Series 6 finale."  
"Woah, Abed, I thought you hated my idea."  
"Shut up Jeff."]

Sometimes, letting go what or who you wished had stayed is just what you need to start trying to actually make an effort.  
And that was what Jeff did, he begin to truly take care of preparing his lessons for the summer school (because, of course, Greendale had to have summer classes, for even weirder students than normal –and Starburns-). Not that he was going to become teacher of the year, but better than regular Animal Planet sessions with some hints of what an unorthodox law class might have looked like.  
Even Frankie was surprised and, by some logic that escaped his understanding, feeling somehow responsible –and proud- of the change; so much she even gave him some advice he didn’t want to hear, but absolutely needed to.  
“Remember that file I wrote about you? Where I called you ‘functional alcoholic’? Well…if you are really willing to become Winger 2.0…you might want to take a look at that?” And, before he could make some sarcastic remark, she added, not changing her expression even a bit: “And you might be able to allow yourself some carbs, if you take out of your diet all that alcohol. Basic biology.”  
Then, she left, leaving him quite puzzled.

Later that very same day, staring at the glass Britta had just served him, he asked his friend directly.  
“Do you think I am an alcoholic?”  
She looked at him for a second, and then kept preparing drinks for the other clients at the bar without even answering.  
“BRITTA.”  
The woman turned when she heard her name being yelled.  
“Wait, were you really waiting for an answer for THAT?”  
“Yeah, Britta, that is usually how asking works. You ask a question and the other person answer, or make a clever remark to avoid answering, but they don’t just go and serve random cocktails. And, if my middle-aged man memory doesn’t fail me, when we first met you told me you were all about honesty.”  
She smiled a bit and laughed, mockingly.  
“Sure thing but, well…If I had to step into my psychologist shoes…”  
“Cut the crap, Perry.”  
She scoffed.  
“You can be such a downer…Yeah, obviously.”  
Silence overcame both of them, even with Chang shouting about some random -better left unknown- thing in the background of the bar.  
Then, Britta seemed to realize something.  
“Wait…does this mean you want to get clean? And…that you would need a professional to help you with the process?”  
He stared at her as if she was an alien.  
“Of course not, shut up Britta.”  
He was eventually going to accept, but he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of telling her right away. 

Annie regretted that kiss for a week; and, then, she regretted it hadn’t last longer. Especially right then.  
It was the last week of August, the last week of her internship, the last week before she started working at the job they were offering her.  
A job that, as a remarkable difference from the previous one she had before reengaging Greendale, she actually enjoyed.  
But, before not going back to Colorado, there was a call she ought to do.

“Milady.”  
“Milord.”  
“Not just a text, uh? You are staying, right?”  
She swallowed, she had missed his voice.  
“Yeah.”  
“I wouldn’t have expected any less from Annie Edison."

That was the last time they spoke in quite a while, though they will always have their texts. 

Things stayed pretty stable and dull -or as dull and stable as they could be at Greendale- until the following December, when Vicky's landlord tried to scam her and all her neighbors in order to charge them extra for their apartments, justifying it with some issues concerning the water supplies.  
Neil, trying to be a noble knight for his girl while acknowledging he was in need of assistance in order to do so, stormed into the middle of Law 101 (that that particular day was basically consisting on explaining 'how to win with a losing argument by attacking the other attorney’s personal flaws’ -a really fine art, if anyone asked the teacher-), heavenly breathing.  
"Jeff, I could use some help. Do you have five minutes?"  
And so, Jeffrey Winger was back in the business...and, somehow, what seemed like a small issue turned to be a way much bigger problem.  
So big that an even more huge surprise was waiting for him after the winter break.

He arrived at his office the morning after leaving Annie, Abed and Shirley (who came to spend their multi-religious-winter-holidays with them –Shirley’s idea, he was still deciding if it was a brilliant or a terrible one-) at the airport and spending the whole night regretting having stopped drinking.  
Caring about people you have to say goodbye to sucked, even more than being 24/7 sober.  
However, he'd rather keep that feeling of slight inconsolable desolation than being hugged for more than ten seconds by such a desperate version of The Dean.  
"Craig, what the...?"  
The man was being too clingy even for his standarts.  
"Please, say no, but say yes because you deserve the best, but say no because I can stand losing you...but say yes..."  
"YES OR NO TO WHAT?!" He sighed, trying to make sense of his speech. "Where is Frankie when I need her?"  
As if she had been summoned, she appeared followed by an even more serious looking woman he had never seen in his life and, for some reason that will probably remain unknown until the end of times, Chang.  
"This is Miss Sawyer and she has a quite...surprising offer to make you..." Frankie stared at Dean Pelton, with a disappointed-but-not-surprised look on her face. "Let Jeff go, Craig. These two ought to have a professional personal conversation."  
And so, after almost five more minutes of the man wining, they did.

The deal was simple: she represented a small Washington DC firm that followed his trial and needed quite desperately a new lawyer. He will be paid more than in his current job (easy thing); not enough to consider himself even slightly as wealthy as he once was, but something was something.  
Furthermore, the rush he had felt being back in court...  
...there was only a catch: DC, and someone with whom he was definitively sure he shouldn't interfere again was right there.  
Luckily enough, he had always been a very keen liar.

Britta, Chang (!) and Duncan strongly disapprove when he told them about lying to everyone and telling that he was going to NY, not DC. However, Frankie and The Dean seemed to agree (for very different reasons, though).  
It might seem like he was in minority (he indeed was), but he had never been one to take orders, no time to begin now.

However, there was no way he could Britta before leaving.  
"This is gonna explode in your face, you know that, don't you?"  
He couldn't imagine how literally that was going to be applied.

FormerCrush(?): [You are the ‘young but surprisingly well-prepared forensic expert whose help was vital to catch the Washington Strangler’, aren’t you?]  
ME!: [What gave it away?]  
FormerCrush(?): [Your boss seemed to be pretty much on the brink of a nervous breakdown while speaking about you on the news, and quite mad having to admit you being smarter than him. Know the feeling.]  
ME!: [Should I be offended or flattered by that?]  
FormerCrush(?): [Both? Anyway, I am proud of you, Miss Edison. Glad DC is treating you well.]  
ME!: [Thanks. What about NY? Have you already figured out how to use the underground?]  
FormerCrush(?): [Yeah, I might or might have not stalked Abed until he made an animated short movie for me to understand it. You know me, anything in order not to do homework myself.]

Annie laughed a bit at the last text. It had been six months since Jeff told her (by text, of course, God knew the man was going to keep his promise of letting her go even by voice -Christmas had been beyond surreal-) he was moving to New York to work in a small firm that show his trial back in Colorado (and, honestly, who didn’t; it went so viral that last Carnival some people even dressed up AS HIM -she hadn’t complain about it, though-).  
She was about to answer the text when Lance –her workmate- handled her the coffee she’d just ordered.  
She looked up as she shipped…  
…and he was there, looking as he (almost) always did, drinking while staring at his phone. Probably the conversation where he had been so shamelessly lying for the last half year.  
She snapped.  
The hot (boiling) coffee ended in her former classmate’s face. 

Luckily enough, the damages done by the liquid weren't going to be permanent.  
However, Annie's anger didn't seem to be even close to dissapearing, as she stared at him, blue eyes turned into fiery ice.  
They were at his apartment, since it was nearby the cheap-Starbucks-wanna-be they had run into each other.  
She waited just until he seemed to have recovered his face's sensibility to start questioning him.  
"Why?"  
He looked at her, and she shivered. It wasn't like last holidays, where they were always around the rest of their found-family and acting just as best friends. It was like every single time they were left alone since...since when exactly?  
Because it had been going on since before the kiss at the end of their last college day, though after the debate one.  
While she wondered about this, his eyes changed, just sad and tired.  
"You know why."  
"No, I don't. Are you so egocentric you thought the mere fact of having you in the same city will, somehow, ruin my life?"  
"Wouldn't take the risk, you matter too much. I matter too little."  
She couldn't take it. This was just stupid up to a new, yet to be discovered, level of stupidity.  
She slapped him, right in the part of his features that was still red for the 'burn'.  
"I am not even going to answer to that. But you could have not been you usual inconsiderate self and realised that, maybe, I could have used my partner in law and crime. Maybe, only maybe, you could have put me down the..." She held her breath before swearing "goddamm fucking pedestal you decided I am. Realize than I am a grown woman capable of saying yes and no to whatever I want. And BE THERE FOR YOUR FRIEND, you shmegegge!"  
"Me shme...what?! Anyways, you were fine when I let you go."  
"BECAUSE YOU WERE STAYING, BECAUSE YOU WANTED TO STAY THE SAME AND YOU KNEW I DIDN'T AND SHOULDN'T. But now, now you are here, so things seem to have changed. So, please, stop being so condescending with me and either take me as your friend or tell me to go, forever."  
He sighed and she knew she had won.  
"Mi casa es tu casa." (Probably the longest sentence he could make in Spanish, and all thanks to Abed's eternal love to Pulp Fiction).  
She sat next to him and everything seemed to be as it always had been before, at the same time than absolutely different.

"Sorry about the slapping."  
"Nah, after you have gone through delirium tremens, this is a piece of cake."  
She froze, she obviously knew the term.  
"So...you don't drink anymore."  
He stared at her as if it was obvious.  
"I didn't drink last Christmas and Shirley's Baby Jesus' speeches are worth a good scotch."  
She chuckled.  
"Yeah, I don't know...I though you and Britta might have some kind of bet going on..."  
He laughed (and regretted immediately, it hurt).  
They kept talking for so long the sun had disappeared when she opened the door to leave.  
"So, can we be just friends again?"  
"Anytime." He opened the door. "Mylady."  
"Mylord."

Once Annie had left, Jeff received a private message from Abed.  
"How...? Oh, yeah, of course: the tracker devices".  
The message was quite short:  
[I give you eight months].

It wasn't eight, but six months when things changed.  
Dramatically.  
After having uncovered a high-level conspiracy at the FBI Annie had been...'forced to leave'.  
By then, still just as friends, they had decided to move together two months after regaining contact, since flats in the capital weren't exactly cheap and none of them exactly rich.  
And, one day a couple of weeks ago she stormed into the small apartment, full of rage and collapsed into the couch, weeping.  
She had told him something about her new case -though not specifics-.  
He sat in front of her.  
"They are going to cover it up, I'm OUT and there is NO WAY I can do the right thing."  
A light turned on inside of his head.  
"Not if you use the right path...Would you mind if I bring Old-Jeff for a couple of hours? All will be out in the public afterwards, I promised."  
She frowned and cleared up her tears.  
"Made it 119 minutes."  
"It will have to work."  
And it worked; it worked out so good he had sixteen minutes left to blackmail one of the corrupted heads of the FBI.  
Annie wouldn't be in danger (at least, from them) and, well, if she ever had a kid, she would be able to afford sending him to a better college than Greendale.  
Not that that was hard.

That day, six months after they reencounter each toehr, Annie arrived home at half past five with a determined look on her face.  
"Remember the British guy who approached us the other night?"  
"The one who thought that you were either my girlfriend or the product of a teenage mistake? Unforgetable. I still don't know if he was hitting on you or me."  
"Neither, he was playing us. He is from the MI7, which is -apparently- the real British secret agency. Yes, I know it sounds like an Abed idea but I saw all the documentation, all in order...they have a base in The States and...offered me a job...in New York."  
His heart broke a little. Maybe they weren't a thing, but he got her back and letting her go again was not going to be easy, but he was not stepping on her way.  
He put himself together, breathed deeply, getting ready to answer and...  
"I want you to come with me. I already talked to your boss, I told her I was your wife (all secret, nobody knows) and that we might need to move to NY and she said she will get in contact with another law firm there..."  
"Hold on, you did what?! Annie, what the actual fuck?!"  
She hushed him in that way only she could do and started talking.  
"I know we are just living together as friends but, let's be honest, except for the more physical part, we are basically a couple. And it's working great; I have never felt as much at home as when we are here, together. Telling each other about our days, arguing about who was supposed to do the dishes (never you, of course) or pretending one of us is not here so our friends don't discover we are actually living together. Furthermore, if I had any doubt before, now I don't. I'm in love with you. And not only with the snarky you, or the surprisingly gentle you when it comes to me, or the fair leader you can be even if you won't admit it. Also with the neurotic you who seems to believe the world will fall apart if he doesn't work out that day, the cynic that kind of belief there is no long-time future for humanity (and that thinking otherwise is stupid), the lazy you who would rather die than do a too complicated task. It's not a crush anymore, it hasn't been in a very long time...it started not being, evolving into what I feel know, after you kind of break my heart at the beginning of our second college year. In addition, I am certain you feel the same way about me, went through the process; from even before, if I dare say, maybe...some point after debate tournament but before the end of our first year? Because I don't know what love is for other people but it's pretty clear that for us it is that: to love, not in spite of our flaws, but them included...  
...what I am trying to say is that..." She took a deep breath and fixed her piercing blue eyes on his. "You once let me go, and it was the right thing to do back then, but know...I am holding on to you and there is nothing you can do to make me change my mind."  
And she kissed him, and it felt like the first time; unexpected and anticlimactic as well as welcomed and more tasteful than anything else in the world.  
They eventually let each other go.  
He smirked.  
"Only you can use 'furthermore', 'otherwise' and 'in addition' in the middle of a LOVE declaration. Plus, this is the second time you pretend to be my wife, is this becoming a pattern I should worry about? And, God, speeches are MY thing, you sneaky thief."  
She punched him in the arm, softly but with seemed to be a bit of sadness.  
“I am serious. What do you say?”

“Aaand you say yes.” Jeff blinked, confused, back to reality. Annie was in front of him, looking as if she hadn’t had enough sleep (which, in fact, she hadn’t).  
“How long have you been there?”  
She pressed her lips, pretending to concentrate hard.  
“Most of the time. I might…have spoken with Britta about the whole flashback thing and thought I could be of some help. Or did you think you could portray my Point of View so well by your own?”  
“Portray my Point of View? Sure it was Britta and not Abed on a wig? Plus, you don’t dare telling her I am actually following up her recommendations.”  
“Shut up, that wasn’t nice. And I know you miss her a bit, wouldn’t hurt to actually talk to her without being mean or bitchy.”  
She was right, so he just waved his hand to let her understand she was right and they went silent.  
“Maybe we shall go to bed? I am tired.”  
She stood up, but he held her back.  
“Please, could we…could we finish the whole flashback thing?”  
{I don´t want the nightmares to come again}, he thought, and she knew, even if he didn’t say them out loud.  
“Well, we moved to New York after you teased Abed about being wrong about you and me…”  
“…to find out he was kind of more right than we thought…Sometimes he gives me the creeps, he is almost a psychic…”  
“…and he offered to pay for an apartment with Troy’s money (which he found to be partly at his name when he arrived at LA, story for another time)…”  
“…and I didn’t want to depend on him but you used your Bambi eyes…”  
“…and then some months after you wanted to propose…”  
“…and you ruined it by proposing before in an extremely elaborate plan that contemplated boycotting mine among other things…”  
“…and we kind of forget to use protection that day…”  
“…result sleeping in the other room…”  
“…and Abed freaked out when we all reunite because he ‘brought back’ Troy, Britta’s idea of a minority-supporting bar allied with Shirley’s Sandwiches had already become a profitable weird business and we had ALL the news so that meant that the ‘tenth anniversary reunion’ will have some terrible events going on…”  
“…he was, because why not, right and we had to fight The Evil Six that wanted to destroy each one of us for different reasons…”  
“…plus spoiling our idea of actually marrying the tenth anniversary of the day you wanted to, well, just get into Britta’s pants and failed tremendously…”  
“…you had to bring that up, didn’t you?”  
“Of course I had. Actually, I liked how things worked out.”  
“With what? The wedding or the getting into Britta’s pants part?”  
“Both. Shirley marrying us in a sandwich store and singing while Abed and Troy prepared a personal blockbuster out of it with Britta using her supernatural wedding planner powers? Can’t complain.”  
“No comments in the other part? Because I failed tremendously that day, not afterwards.”  
“I am here to cheer you up, not feed your ego, mister. Do you remember the Hulk incident?”  
“Ouch.”  
They started laughing until Annie become serious all of the sudden.  
“These nightmares…you know they are not real, right? You are not that evil soulless monster you dream about.”  
He grinned,  
“I hope you are right.”  
“Oh, I am. Mylord…”

Cut! Now things were going to get above PG and we wanted to leave this experience there.  
Abed & Troy in the Evening Productions.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaand, that was it.  
> Yeah, Troy and Abed 'evolved' from Mornings to Evenings.  
> What did you guys think? I honestly sooo afraid I didn't do a good job. I only discovered Community a few months ago but it had meant a lot of me so...wanting to honour it with the LONGEST ONE-SHOT I HAVE EVER WRITEN.  
> All feedback (and comment, kudos, anything) are sooooooo thanked,  
> Long life and prosperity,  
> Marla


End file.
